Syzdekistan

The space program is one of the few things in my life that thrills me. I get an indescribable rush of emotion when I watch a Shuttle launch or one of our robots sends back an amazing image. It makes me proud to be an American; and, even more so, proud to be an inquisitive [...]

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The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which was acting as a radio relay for yesterday’s landing of the Mars Phoenix Lander snapped this amazing picture of the Lander under a fully-unfurled parachute.

From a JPL press release:
Camera pointing for the image from HiRISE used navigational information about Phoenix updated on landing day. The camera team and Phoenix team [...]

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After a flawless landing, Mars Phoenix Lander has begun to send back images from the martian arctic. The first images were engineering images to look at parts of the lander such as the landing legs, the unfurled solar arrays, and to test the cameras and computers. So far everything looks great and after several days [...]

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Back in September, I wrote about the unusual meteor impact in Peru. My comments got picked up by a New York Times science blog and, more recently, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Brown Daily Herald. His story ran today and here are some excerpts:
The handful of shepherds who happened to lead their [...]

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I just watched the Space Shuttle Endeavour night landing and was surprised to see what appeared to be an orange strobe light flashing at the base of the tail. I didn’t think the Shuttle had any sort of aircraft-style anti-collision light. The light looked weird for a aircraft light. It was orange and not on [...]

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Those of you who got to celebrate a “white Easter” this year surely noticed that Easter was early this year. Even here in Syzdekistan, the traditional Easter dinner held outside was unusually pleasant and not on the warm side as it often is. Yes, Easter falling on March 23 is very unusual and this the [...]

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This site claims a car being driving on Interstate 5 got hit by a piece of space junk causing $3000 in body damage. It surprised the body shop guys when the pulled out a big hunk of metal out of the car. It’s definitely manmade and it would be very interesting to figure out from [...]

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Wow. This pictures shows a billowing dust cloud caused by an avalanche from the left part of the picture. The picture was taken straight down and the the reddish bands just left of center are a 2300 foot cliff with a 60 degree slope. The white on the left is carbon dioxide frost that is [...]

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It has been about 10 days since the US Navy shot down a failed spy satellite. Here is a great article about the 48 pieces of the satellite that are still in orbit and being tracked. There is a bunch of great diagrams of the orbits of the fragments diverging and then converging along the [...]

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Everyone can find the constellation Orion. It’s high during the winter. Just look for the line of three bright stars. Now go online and match the pictures.
OK, now ponder the fact that we are one of the first generations that lives in a world where people don’t see a sky rich with stars.
Thanks [...]

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